


Dirk and His Label Maker

by vespirus



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, it's just FLUFF okay!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 11:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18915784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vespirus/pseuds/vespirus
Summary: "that's canon" - author of time displacement





	Dirk and His Label Maker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PrincessFawna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessFawna/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Time Displacement: Side A](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10489671) by [PrincessFawna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincessFawna/pseuds/PrincessFawna). 



> inspired by the best hs fic of all time, time displacement, and on a reread once again commenting on how dirk has all the wires ziptied and organized in the house because hes a NERD

Your birthday had always been a bit of a non-issue. Dipping out of the foster system to raise yourself and only learning your actual birth  _ date _ when you’re 13 and you get some girl you met online to hack into the records system and find it for you can do that to a guy. It’s never really been a big part of your life. You’re not really the ‘celebration type’ anyway. So it’s fine. Until you have a son. Apparently.

TT: He needs stability. Routines and traditions and normal family things. This isn’t exactly what one would call an ‘average’ environment for a child to be raised in.  
TT: If I could, I would pull a stupidly specific statistic for the amount of single dads in the developed world for you but, alas. I am hindered by my poor human flesh and it’s lack of RJ-45 connector ports. I keep calling the service provider but he’s blocked my number. The bastard.  
TT: I apologize. It seems due to an unforeseen and unrepeatable glitch in my less than stellar programming that I failed to inform you that we’ve been contacted by HGTV, they’re doing a new show about how to install your brain-clone AI into your house in a functional yet tasteful way. They’ve run through some beta-testing and it turns out it’s a huge hit in the demographic of ‘18 Year Old Single Fathers Who Love to Dodge Important Topics of Discussion.’  
TT: Just celebrate your fucking birthday, dude. And then we can celebrate his too.  
TT: Fine.  


So you celebrate it. For his sake. You don’t really expect to get anything out of it.

 

It’s shaped kind of like a calculator, but boxier. Boxier even than the TI-84, that graphing calculator you got when you took the more advanced statistics classes online that could be plugged into your computer and that you spent weeks writing stupid useless joke programs to install on it. It’s white and purple plastic, with an alphabetical keyboard over the face topped by a wide but short rectangle of a monitor. You stare at it. You can see Dave bouncing on the balls of his feet waiting for your reaction. You don’t know what the hell this is.

It’s been years – it feels like so, so many years. Dave is growing up and he’s picking out presents for you all on his own and when the hell did that happen and why did he have to make it to challenging of a game. It’s your  _ birthday _ . It’s supposed to be a day for you to relax. (Everyone in this house knows you would rather stress than relax though, so. Maybe it was on purpose?)

You look up at Dave in silence. Lost for words. Totally struck speechless by such an awesome gift. Waiting for an explanation.

Dave is bouncing up and down and kind of wiggling, he seems very enthusiastic about this present. He beams at you for a couple beats before offering, in a voice with barely restrained excitement,

“It’s a label maker?”

Your eyebrows shoot up a bit and you must look pretty thrown off because Dave laughs and even though the cursor is but blinking on your shades you can feel the ghost of Hal’s chuckle alongside it. Because of course Hal is in on all this.

Dave brings up the box that it came from and takes it from you to load in a spool of sticker-tape or whatever. You watch as he takes a couple shoves to get it in right and pops open the back panel to put in a couple batteries and clicks it on and hands it to you, radiant as the summer sun in the American South. You look back down at it as the cursor blinks at you, prompting you to choose an option. You click through a few menus, having to take a moment to reconfigure your brain from QWERTY to ABCDE and then it’s printing out its first label. You clip it off and peel the sticker backing off and apply the label across the front of your shirt with careful precision, making sure the text faces the right way to be read by Dave. Dave tilts his head to read it and peels out with the sweetest laugh you’ve ever heard and goes to take the machine from you to make one for himself. He’s tapping away at the buttons and talking a mile a minute about how he thought of this and Hal said you’d love it and they special ordered it and everything and you pick at the edge of the label saying  **hat.** emblazoned over your shirts orange baseball cap logo and smile. Maybe you chuckle a bit as well, but that’s just because your little brother’s so ridiculous. It’s your birthday, fuck it.


End file.
